


TRIDU Tidbits

by MsLanna



Series: TRIDU-verse [5]
Category: Star Wars Legends: Thrawn Trilogy - Timothy Zahn
Genre: AU to my AU, F/M, Outtakes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-10
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-06-25 13:26:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15641667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MsLanna/pseuds/MsLanna
Summary: Short pieces that are AU to my own fic or will not make into the fic for whatever reasons.





	1. What I never said.

**Author's Note:**

> Reflections by Thrawn after his return to Csilla. Cut from the story for overboarding soppiness and feels.

Because when the timing was good it would have been a waterfall of words and it was so much easier to just hold you close and inhale the scent of your hair. If you were still here, it is what I would do. But you are not and maybe this is too late. I have nothing else to do, so here it is. In the hope that one day you might read it still. Should I release you from my arms.

Because I miss you and – and I love you.

I will not lie and say I did so from the moment I saw you. When you arrived, you were a mess. A confused woman looking like a lost teenager. You could not separate reality from imagination. The things you believed to know never let you get an unbiased look onto this galaxy. Maybe I should count myself lucky for that.

You were enthusiastic, naïve. You tried your best to be afraid, but you were not. You just didn't manage, not until much later, until it was too late.

You came with a package of ideas and dreams that were impossible. But you were determined to get the most of them. You said 'whatever it takes' and then you went at it. It seemed laughable until you just gritted your teeth and went with C'baoth because it was what needed to be done. You did not only say it. You meant it. You were adamant, unswerving and it did not fit with what you showed otherwise.

You yield so easily. Forming you seemed too easy to be worth it. You just bent away under whatever you faced. It was not until you returned from Jomark with C'baoth, still sane, still smiling and not one shade more lenient about your fate that the lesson really struck home. You bend. You yield away under the forces you cannot control like weed and spring up again. You do _not_ change.

Because you knew the core inside yourself. And you would not budge when it was concerned. You stood up for every principle, every ideal that defined who you are and simply would not change. It made shaping you rather difficult. The manoeuvres it took to prepare you to kill even a person like Disra... Not to mention making you take command responsibility. It was difficult. It took very long. But it was worth it.

You still had those impossible ideas, equilibrium of all things. And how you fought to find a way to achieve it without selling out yourself. I watched and waited and when you realised you had nothing else to offer, I realised that in fact I had, for once, underestimated you. You knew me, maybe not well, maybe not thoroughly, maybe not accurately, but you knew me enough to find the one weakness I could never give up.

And you offered my home to me.

What a daring, insolent, presumptuous offer. And the one I could hardly refuse. It took me a while to think this madness through and find a way that might work out. A way home that might actually work out after all the years spent in exile and with my growing ties back to Csilla still not yielding any progress on my return. The idea itself was irresistible. Irresistible enough for me to consider it seriously.

I looked at you, seeing all that did not match and all that would have to be reworked and still, behind your head the orb of Csilla hovered. If I could only make you work. You had to change, and you did not change easily. It was a project of great difficulties, but I looked at you and there was something adamant buried. Something I had considered too costly to unearth. Only suddenly it wasn't anymore.

I looked at you with the love for my home. And you only saw the love. You kept wondering if it was real. It was, very much so, if only directed at you indirectly. I am not sorry for that because everything else would have been a lie.

In the end you did change, just enough to accommodate the insight to who you were to reach your goals. You bent and when you stood up again, the shape was slightly changed. You asked me if it didn't bother me that you hated me sometimes. The true answer would have been: it made me sorry. Not for what I have done, but about how it made you feel. The necessary is not always agreeable.

I did not expect to be affected so much when I returned. But instead of the bumbling woman, possibly adorable in her efforts, there was you. A lady, the demeanour, the bearing, the language and body language of my people adapted into your being. You had changed. But then again, you had not. The Chiss have made the mistake of being satisfied with adapting you superficially. Your skin-coloured eyes were still telling who you were. And you had not budged one inch. Instead you made them act in your favour, achieving and effecting what you wanted. I didn't expect to be proud of you.

I didn't expect to be grateful, either. But Sarah bounding up to me as if I was a long lost father she knew... I returned and I did indeed have a daughter. You have been true to your word and more. I was uncertain for a moment if I should not have gone that extra mile now and then.

You achieved more than I had expected, everything I had thought of. And still your eyes showed me the insecure half-woman unsure where to tread from time to time. I did not understand. The one mistake I made, and the one I am actually sorry for. It would have spared you a lot of pain had you known. But I thought I had made myself clear that night.

You were so close. It had been years, and a few nights more would not have mattered much. But we did not wait – _we_ did not. Maybe I should have made more words then. Not that even in retrospect I can find an opportune moment. I thought everything was clear.

Maybe I should have told you then, even though it might just have ruined the mood. Sometimes I do wonder if things would have been different, if ever so slightly had you truly known. I think so. Your reaction when you finally realised it strongly implies it. You had been waiting for it. I am sorry I did not tell you.

Now all I can do I hope I get the chance to tell you again. One day. There is no happily ever after. We committed to making a consistent attempt at it though. Something I would very much like to continue. I hope that you carry this unfortunately recent realisation with you. Would I had had more time to impress it on you. I will not give up hope that one day, I will be given this time.

Because I miss you. And Ido love you.


	2. Taken by Storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An AU that played out pretty often in my head over the years.  
> Sorry, Thrawn. Throwing your best friend at Mellanna was not the best of all ideas ever...

I sat very stiffly on Storm's couch and stared at the data card on the low table before us. It took conscious effort, reminding me to breathe in, breathe out, repeat. My hands were clamped tightly between my knees. We hadn't spoken since I had laid the data card down. That had been at least one eternity ago.

"So this is it?" Storm finally beached the silence."

I just nodded. That was indeed it. What I had come for. What I had worked towards. The one and only goal of my existence in the Chiss Ascendancy.

"Is it the only copy?"

I nodded again, almost squashing my hands between my knees.

The only copy. All that stood between me and – I closed my eyes. "What do I do with it?"

Storm didn't reply. What could he say? That I needed to take the case to the Meritocra. That the Ruling Houses needed to see this and sit in judgement. That Thrawn would be back before I knew it. We both knew all that. I knew all that. And yet, here I was, sitting on Storm's couch like s coiled spring, ready to launch or break.

"What is the alternative?" He finally asked softly.

I stared at my knees. Alternative. What a kind word. My heart beat in my throat. I was sure he could see it. All those strange lines wandering over my body in infrared, tensions, anticipations, complications. I took a long breath and held it.

This is where the fates decided; where I took the plunge, took the fall, where I tumbled headfirst into hell. Either way. "There is no middle ground," I recited softly to myself, "we tumble down either side, left or right."

"Is there an alternative to what's right?" I asked.

"There is always an alternative," Storm replied. "Who do you do right by?"

I pressed my eyes shut, clamped my lips, tried to be still. _I gotta find my place._ But I had to breathe, a rattling noise in the silence. _I'm just trying to be happy._ But was I? Was I really? When had I thought about myself the last time? Had I ever? What had happened to 'no regrets'? They don't work, they only hurt.

But this hurt too.

First day of the rest of my life. And only I could decide how that life would look. I looked back, the last years, the short time aboard the _Chimaera_ , the long years before that. Who was I? What did I want? _I just wanna be happy._ But what was that even? How could I decide what to do when I didn't know what I wanted because I was not sure who I am.

Who I am. That shipwreck of a story. I smiled at the stab of my old life. Old and wise, that had been the goal. Happy. Content. How much of that had I achieved already? And, did any of that matter, when I compared the two futures spreading ahead of me? So similar, so different.

"Me." It was a tiny whisper accompanied by tears. "I must do right by me."

Storm put his hand over mine as well as he could.

"Then do that."

His voice was too close for comfort. Warm fingers on my skin. So close and still so far. I leant against him. My rock despite his name. How far we've come. Strong to the last. Doing what was right despite.

I turned my head, pressed my face into his shoulder. Right for who? "And what will you do?"

Storm put his other arm around my shoulders. Not minding the shaking bundle of despair I had turned into. Strong to the last. I wanted to cry, only I was crying already so what could I do?

"What needs to be done," his voice seeped through my hair. "Always what you need me to do."

I held still. Very, very still, feeling his arm around me, hand on my hand, face against my hair. So close to reaching that famous happy end. I had everything I needed. I had everything I wanted. For once in my life, fate could have done me a favour and let that been the same thing.

When I was calm again, I raised my head, looked into familiar red eyes, the familiar face lined with familiar concern. Freeing one of my hands I followed the lines with a finger. Concern for me actually. Wild.

"Mellanna." He used my name as gentle admonishment as he pried my hand from his face.

Would it hurt? Yes. But everything I did now, no matter what, would hurt. So what about the comfort? I curled my fingers around his.

"You promised," I whispered.

"I did." His fingers tightened around mine.

I leant towards him for a breathless eternity, closing my eyes for the last miles.

Storm inhaled sharply when our lips met. They stayed, pressed gently against each other for a soft moment. I inhaled his breath, freed my other hand to reach for him.

The spell broke with one hard pull, pressing my body against his, lips opening to let our teeth clash in the pent-up hunger of years. He tasted of copper as well, his fingers flaring up as pinpoints on my body as he dug into my flesh.

I twisted against him, trying to find a comfortable position to eat him up whole. My hands dug into his hair and the cloth of his robes, pulling him towards me disregarding that we were pressed against each other. I wanted more of him, all of him, only him.

Storm yielded, following my pull, toppling me slowly. I held him down tightly, feeling the heaving of his chest against mine, the undeniable pressure against my thighs. When he broke our kiss, I moaned in frustration, feeling cold and abandoned all over.

Storm looked down at me, eyes ablaze in the way I associated with unbridled desire. His hands cupped my face, his weight resting comfortably on me. "Mellanna…"

I followed his gaze to the data card. Then I nodded with a smile. Taking off one of my boots was a complicated manoeuvre but it allowed for a lot of our bodies grinding against the other. Unthinking, I brought the heel down on the data card. I scattered. There was a dent in the table. It didn't matter.

Storm smiled as he bore down on me again.


End file.
